I am concentrating on my other site for a while and Fred will join me from time to time. He is concentrating on being a child and this is busy work. He will be helping me with my new leadership guide....the A 2 Z of LEADERless, how I got where I got to and why I am not a millionaire but A2Z LEADERless wiffs for short.

Here in the UK we have bonfire night, the 5th November, I will not go into the history you can find that in lots of places. We have fireworks to celebrate this piece of anarchy from are history. This is not about that directly but it is a bit about anarchy, in a small way. This is a small piece on should I give a f**k that my 15 yo has fallen out with his math tutor. My X-wife phoned me from another country she is visiting to say she had a message from school about his apparent disruption in the maths class and his teachers feeling of his disrespect for her. Now, this is not a failing kid with behavioral problems but he can be belligerent at times and he does get a bee in his bonnet about certain people. So anyway, my X wants me to phone school to discuss. So why is it that my first thoughts are why?

Why can't this teacher sort this. He is not throwing tables about, he has not foul mouthed at her, not threatened her and as far as I can see he is not under-performing. Put him on report, detention maybe, surely the school has tactics for belligerence or has it become so well mannered that you need to pull in the parents when the kids have attitude. Is that not something that 15 yo's have as part of the DNA. Has the norms shifted so this becomes a parental issue or are all the other kids really nice. Maybe it is out of the norm for him, so she's worried he is masking some other deeper ills, he is after all from a broken family, its a cry for help!

Anyway, I phoned school and left a message so I await a call but what am I to do?

so the kid is back at school, what you been doing with your time, not been updating the site for one, excuses...many and none, depending on your perspective. It always depends on your perspective.

So my older boy is 15 yo and is team captain for the football team this year. He Made a good start. He is confident to talk to the other boys and gives plenty of positive feedback on the pitch, he is a good role model too, never stops running, gives it a 110%.

So we roll up for the term review at school, this is the big year, so it comes early to make sure they have their targets set right. He did well in a lot of the exams last year and is a grade A/B student but dropped maybe too many Cs. His effort score was down too and its all about effort. As we stood outside the office we causally reviewed the effort scores and do you know what, the top scorers were mostly girls, they make a lot of effort. And the school of course will want to have you know that effort= results but what is effort? In this context it appears to be about active listening, asking questions, doing the homework(practice)...being generally obedient and willing to show willing. There not bad attributes to have and if you are to learn you need to listen, to engage, to take on the practice, refine the skills be they motor or cognitive. My son knows this, as a football player he has to follow the drills, listen to the coach and ask questions (but that comes rarely), actually mostly he wants to practice, he wants to be doing it, not talking about it or watching it.

Girls are social and just to show I can offend, they are conditioned to be externally referenced from an early age. Some might say this is an evolutionary response, honed on the basis that being constantly told you are ok encourages some survival gene. Boys are just arrogant fucks, with little external referencing, they know how to do it and why should they participate in rituals of mutual exploration that could bring better answers, like asking questions in class or actually practicing something (the homework). Why do corporate entities so often implode, end up screwing themselves in some self-grandising narcissism, because there headed up by men who would never ask a question that might show a dependence on others, they internally reference.

So an effort system based on mainly external referencing rules favors girls. My sons average of 3.6 is not bad when you exclude the girl scores. Yes, there are boys up there with 4 and higher (0-5 scale) but we all know about them.

This whole exam business is very prone to modifications of the rule system. Recent scores for boys in results have turned as they take away course work and put in controlled assessments, that is the doing it for real. In football the boys in our team do the drills and enjoy some but they love game.

So holiday over and I have two more weeks with Fred at home. What is a father to do? Draw up a list of movies that need to be seen, manage Fred's newly discovered appetite for his DS, my Iphone and his Willy, yes we have entered the Willy stage. As most men appear not to leave this stage and to be truthful I am not too sure this is healthy option for harmony in grown up communities. Adult males may disguise the frequent pulling of their dodger, or need for exhibitionism and ' is mine bigger than yours' trite, primarily through various corporate, political and 'machismo' rituals that they(we) embark upon. Men and women are different on many domains dependent on the reader or writer, except that physically we are different. Facts are co-constructed, so in essence we bring forth those realities that maintain various equilibriums we operate within, whether they are helpful or not. Are sexual organs are not the same although they are both of the reproductive group. Yet, we have attached multiple meanings to there use outside the reproductive act. Years of theories of one sort of another have been expanded and attached to what it might mean to have a penis or vagina. - Sigmund Freud’s views on women stirred controversy during his own lifetime and continue to evoke considerable debate today. "Women oppose change, receive passively, and add nothing of their own," he wrote in a 1925 paper entitled "The Psychical Consequences of the Anatomic Distinction Between the Sexes."The behaviours of the sexes reduced to how we define ourselves in respect of this slight anatomical difference ( of course there is a pretty fundamental further difference in that men do not have a uterus and therefore can not carry a child but this is already too complicated for a SAHD blog). So Fred has withdrawal effects from his DS and my Iphone on top of a curiosity about his genatalia. So I have a 5 yo with what might be an addictive personality and a castration anxiety. Hey, he might make a CEO yet!!He wants to know what his mummies is called because he clearly recognizes there is a difference. It can't be a willy, can it, its different, no its called a 'vagina', in hindsight fanny might at least create some similarities, there both non-biological names. I am sure he asked me the other day about the size of mine. Tonight my wife told me that when she popped to the supermarket the other night with Fred in his pyjama's he flashed himself when down one of the aisles much to the merriment of two men shopping.

So tomorrow we are off to see that all innocent movie cars 2, see who is the fastest, has the bigger engine and can thrust away on the race track.

Seriously though, this stage of Fred's curiosity collides with messy thoughts I have about the 'goodmenproject article on ' The new Macho' http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/the-new-macho/ . By messy I mean I am not sure the writer has constructed a viable argument, yet I kinda like he has given it a go and expresses himself so well. What I think unnerves me is that it appears to define competition as the goal ( I am not anti-competitive but see it as a means not an end, we need to define the values that uphold human justice and use productivity to support those values) and that men are clearly equipped (pun intended) to do this better then women. That they somehow take risks and innovate more than women. Do you know how risky childbirth can be.

So I ask myself 'what is a good man' and some friends ( a good women was popular) and embark on a period of introspection. In the hope that Fred and I can somehow manage through this stage without crushing his curiosity, killing me in some oedipal drama and being comfortable in his skin and with those of the opposite genatal disposition.

Did I mention, recently my ex-wife told me that our 14 yo (lives with her and visits me) was drawing penises on the wall at home! So do I add absent guilt father syndrome to my woes or take it that Fred and I have a long journey and this 'willy' plot is going to run and run for some years.

I have heard swimming with the sharks but never swimming with the 'fucks'.

So we're on holiday and we meet this really great and friendly French family. On this day we are giving the father and his 13 yo daughter a lift in our car to a local scuba diving centre, where she is going for a lesson and he is planning to run the 10km back to their villa, in the soaring heat. My wife and 5 yo are in the back with his daughter, we are taking a trip out to enjoy the sun and sea.

'so have you done any scuba diving, its marvelous'. I say no but try to show the appropriate interest. He goes onto to describe some of the wonders of this activity in what is a good command of the english, except for what appears to be his word for something you can swim with. 'so you can swim with the 'fucks' (now did he say forks or was it folks, not sure you can swim with forks, maybe its a type of spear gun or was it his folks that he likes swimming with). 'you call them the 'fucks', swim with them'. By this time he is gesturing. So my wife from the back is trying to interpret ' dolphins' 'seals' and making clapping gestures like a seal. ' no, i think it is 'fucks', he says. Now at this time I am thinking no you don't mean that but can't even attempt to explain why. My 5 yo remains silent. We come to some agreement that is must be seals that you are swimming with but are they really called 'fucks' in French. Imagine the french classes " please miss, can you tell us about the seals".

Now we stop and they get out and my wife, whose been in the back gets in the front. We set off and just begin to ponder this rather surreal conversation and my son, who has remained uncharacteristically silent says ' what are the phoques' (pronounced fucks......).

Yep, it is apparently true but some would argue it is fock but to us it is always going to be the time a Frenchman asked if we have ever swam with the 'Fucks'.

Well, how do you sum up that. Sun, sea, wine, new friends, minor stand offs, sand, jellyfish, tapas, sights, art and Fredrik takes to swimming without his float aid.

As I am a house wife who does not clean I have lots of time on my hands. My 5 yo goes to school so outside of dropping him off and remembering to pick him up, I get to mess around at home and take coffee at my favorite cafe, visit the local art gallery and shop. Somehow I fit in the ironing and food shop. So the family holiday is a welcome break. For my wife it is really really important. She works very hard and pays the mortgage.

As this was my first break as the house wife I started to see how important a break is for a working parent but how hard it can be. You have to wind down and you have to stop yourself winding up for work before you have even finished the break. If both parents are working it can be really hard. That precious break, time with the kids and with each other invaded by premature thoughts of returning to work. So in solidarity with my working wife I avoided all conversations about all the jobs I have still not started. "lets not talk about that now love, lets just enjoy these precious moments with each other and the kids" . This would help her to not think about all the projects she had to sort out when she got back to work.

Back from our epic music festival, no time to post videos but will do so when back in two weeks. Now packing for Menorca. Fred very excited and mummy just as excited. One more sleep to go or half a sleep as we have to get up at 3am to catch flight.

Fred also excited as he has a new toy, Sam flynn from Tron, a gift for putting up with my swimming trunk search yesterday, in whcih he was generally disparaging about most of the ones I tried on, great, a 5yo with a sense of fashion!

Anyway, the Tron toy speaks and we have decided to use some as a signature quote for members of the family;

1. Where am I, am I on the grid - that would be grandad2. We have got to work together, its the only way - that would be mum3. My name is Sam Flynn - that's Fred's4. I am not a program - thats got to be Dads

Futurecurio is MyEdDy, man of 'his' time and not 'the time', #dad and wife rolled in butter, rejected and redundant, taking life one beat at a time and also to be found blogging and picturing at curiousfutures.com

Most Men at Heart are Twits...

I don't know about you but I guess I am not unique, so some of you did not and have not read all the instructions for making a website, twittering or life. We stumble along, if we are lucky a women takes pity, picks us up and gives us the easy read quick set up version of life, this will be feed to us on a regular basis in what is called a MOM list (that is a Manually Operated Memory insert).